Attending the 45th Munich Security Conference from Friday to Sunday will be US Vice President Joe Biden, National Security Adviser James Jones and Richard Holbrooke, Obama's newly appointed point man for Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Also flying in will be US General David Petraeus, US Central Command head, who is hoping to replicate in Afghanistan his success in bringing under control the Sunni Muslim insurgency in Iraq.

Absent however will be Defence Secretary Robert Gates, appointed by George W. Bush and kept on by the new broom in the White House, and Hillary Clinton, Obama's fierce pre-election rival turned secretary of state.

"It's always been the sort of place where the Americans have exposed their doctrine. Everyone's waiting to hear what the first messages are," one EU official told AFP.

Other attendees include Afghan President Hamid Karzai, NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ali Larijani, Iran's parliamentary speaker.

Munich will not however see the first talks between senior US and Iranian officials under Obama, who has said he will seek dialogue with the Islamic Republic, with Larijani this week ruling out any parleys in Munich.

The 300 or so delegates have no shortage of burning issues to chew over.

Top of the list will be the raging Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and Obama's plans there, Iran's nuclear programme and Washington's plan to place missile defence installations on Russia's doorstep in eastern Europe.

Other topics sure to come up include arms control, the Middle East, energy security, the situation in the Central Caucasus region after August's short war between Russia and Georgia, and the Balkans.

Looming large as ever will be Russia.

Two years ago Vladimir Putin, then Russia's president and now the prime minister, used Munich to launch a broadside on the United States as a reckless "unipolar" power that has made the world more dangerous.

This time, Russia is being represented by Sergei Ivanov, deputy PM, although German magazine Spiegel said that the heavyweight US delegation has caused a re-think and that President Dmitry Medvedev might attend.

Alexander Rahr, Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin, believes the stage is set in Munich for something of a rapprochement in US-Russian relations.

The new US administration and Russia's serious economic problems have made Moscow much less abrasive, as shown in the "very conciliatory tone" struck by Putin at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week, Rahr said.

"If Medvedev does indeed come to Munich, I would interpret that as signifying that Russia wants to hug the West and make up," Rahr told AFP.

In the same way, the recession could also make other countries including the United States rein in defence spending, Josef Janning from the Bertelsmann Foundation believes.

Washington might use Munich to announce that it is no longer going to press ahead with plans to put elements of its missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, both Janning and Rahr said.

"What (former US president Bill) Clinton did for Reagan's SDI ('Star Wars'), Obama could do for the missile shield," Janning told AFP.

The other Bush policy that has irked Moscow -- the prospect of NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia -- is also likely to be put on the backburner, not least due to Ukraine's "near-bankruptcy," Rahr said.

NATO's Scheffer has also said he hopes his scheduled meeting in Munich with Ivanov would be a "first step in a fresh approach" to relations after the spat between Moscow and the alliance after the Georgia conflict.

The thorniest subject though is the one that may become Obama's biggest foreign policy headache: Afghanistan.

Obama has said he plans to send another 20,000 to 30,000 troops there, and Munich is set to mark the opening gambit in tricky negotiations with Washington's allies on which allies will also step up to the plate.

One nation that will not is the host country, Germany. Merkel has ruled out any further increase in the German contingent once it has been raised to 4,500 this year. And Berlin's troops will stay in the relatively peaceful north.

The issue will crop up again in two upcoming NATO ministerial meetings next month before a summit of the alliance's leaders in Strasbourg, France on April 3 -- attended by the man himself.

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